JAPAN 



A LECTURE 



BY 
SIR Ri\BINDRANATH TAGORE 



I THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1916 



All rights reserved 



JAPAN 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

MEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO.. Limted 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
UELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



JAPAN 



A LECTURE 



BY 
SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1916 



All rights resened 



2. 



COPYKIGHT, zgi6 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Published August, xoz6. 



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AUG -1 1916 

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JAPAN 



JAPAN 



I AM glad to have this opportunity once more of 
speaking to you before I leave Japan. My stay 
here has been so short that one may think I have not 
earned my right to speak to you about anything 
concerning your country. I feel sure that I shall 
be told that I am idealising certain aspects, while 
leaving others unnoticed, and that there are chances 
of my disillusionment, if I remain here for long. 
For I have known foreigners, whose long experience 
has made them doubtful about your moral qualifica- 
tions, — even of your full efficiency in modern equip- 
ments of progress. 

But I am not going to be brow-beaten by the 
authority of long experience, which is likely to be 
an experience of blindness carried through long 
years. I have known such instances in my own 
country. The mental sense, by the help of which 
we feel the spirit of a people, is like the sense of sight, 
or of touch, — it is a natural gift. It finds its objects, 
not by analysis, but by direct apprehension. Those 
who have not this vision, merely see events and facts, 
and not their inner association. Those who have 
no ear for music, hear sounds, but not the song. 

7 



8 JAPAN 

Therefore when, by the mere reason of the lengthi- 
ness of their suffering, they threaten to establish 
the fact of the tune to be a noise, one need not be 
anxious about music. Very often it is mistakes that 
require longer time to develop their tangles, while 
the right answer comes promptly. 

You ask me how can I prove that I am right in 
my confidence that I can see. My answer is because 
I see something which is positive. There are others 
who affirm that they see something contrary. It 
only proves that I am looking on the picture side 
of the canvas, and they on the blank side. There- 
fore my short view is of more value than their pro- 
longed stare. 

It is a truism to say that shadows accompany 
light. What you feel, as the truth of a people, has 
its numberless contradictions, — ^just as the round- 
ness of the earth is contradicted at every step by 
its hills and hollows. Those who can boast of a 
greater familiarity with your country than myself 
can bring before me loads of contradictions, but I 
remain firm upon my vision of a truth which does 
not depend upon its dimension, but upon its vitality. 

At first I had my doubts. I thought that I might 
not be able to see Japan as she is herself, but should 
have to be content to see the Japan that takes pride 
in her acrobatics violently to appear as something 
else. On my first arrival in this country, when I 
looked out from the balcony of a house on the hill- 



JAPAN 9 

side, Kobe town — that huge mass of corrugated iron 
roofs — appeared to me like a dragon, with glistening 
scales, basking in the sun, after having devoured a 
large slice of the living flesh of the earth. This dragon 
did not belong to the mythology of the past, but to 
that of the present; and with its iron mask it tried 
to look real to the children of the age — real as the 
majestic rocks on the shore, as the epic rhythm of 
the sea-waves. Anyhow it hid Japan from my view, 
and I felt myself like the traveller whose time is 
short, waiting for the cloud to be lifted to have a 
sight of the eternal snow on the Himalayan summit. 
I asked myself, "Will the dense mist of the iron 
age give way for a moment, and let me see what is 
true and abiding in this land?" I was enveloped 
in a whirlwind of reception, but I had my misgivings 
and thought that this might be a violent outbreak 
of curiosity, — or that these people felt themselves 
bound to show their appreciation of a man who had 
won renown from Europe, thus doing honour to 
the West in a vicarious form. 

But the clouds showed rifts, and glimpses I had 
of Japan where she is true and more human. While 
travelling in a railway train I met, at a wayside 
station, some Buddhist priests and devotees. They 
brought their basket of fruits to me and held their 
lighted incense before my face, wishing to pay hom- 
age to a man who had come from the land of Buddha. 
The dignified serenity of their bearing, the simplicity 



10 JAPAN 

of their devoutness, seemed to fill the atmosphere 
of the busy railway station with a golden light of 
peace. Their language of silence drowned the noisy 
effusion of the newspapers. I felt that I saw some- 
thing which was at the root of Japan's greatness. 
And, since then, I have had other opportunities of 
reaching the heart of the people; and I have come 
to the conclusion, that the welcome which flowed 
towards me, with such outburst of sincerity, was 
owing to the fact that Japan felt the nearness of 
India to herself, and realised that her heart has room 
to expand beyond her own boundaries and the 
boundaries of the modern time. 

I have travelled in many countries and have met 
with men of all classes, but never in my travels did 
I feel the presence of the human so distinctly as 
in this land. In other great countries signs of man's 
power loomed large, and I saw vast organisations 
which showed efficiency in all their features. There 
display and extravagance in dress, in furniture, in 
costly entertainments, were startling. They seem 
to push you back into a corner, like a poor intruder 
at a feast; they are apt to make you envious, or 
take your breath away with amazement. There 
you do not feel man as supreme; you are hurled 
against the stupendousness of things that alienates. 
But in Japan it is not the display of power or wealth 
that is the predominating element. You see every- 
where emblems of love and admiration, and not 



JAPAN II 

mostly of ambition and greed. You see a people 
whose heart has come out and scattered itself in 
profusion in its commonest utensils of everyday use, 
in its social institutions, in its manners, that are 
carefully perfect, and in its dealings with things 
that are not only deft, but graceful in every move- 
ment. 

What has impressed me most in this country is 
the conviction that you have realised nature's se- 
crets, not by methods of analytical knowledge, but 
by sympathy. You have known her language of 
lines and music of colours, the symmetry in her 
irregularities, and the cadence in her freedom of 
movements; you have seen how she leads her im- 
mense crowds of things yet avoids all frictions; 
how the very conflicts in her creations break out 
in dance and music; how her exuberance has the 
aspect of the fulness of self-abandonment, and not 
a mere dissipation of display. You have discovered 
that nature reserves her power in forms of beauty; 
and it is this beauty which, like a mother, nourishes 
all the giant forces at her breast, keeping them in 
active vigour, yet in repose. You have known that 
energies of nature save themselves from wearing 
out by the rhythm of a perfect grace, and that she 
with the tenderness of her curved lines takes away 
fatigue from the world's muscles. I have felt that 
you have been able to assimilate these secrets into 
your life, and the truth which lies in the beauty of 



12 JAPAN 

all things has passed into your beings. A mere knowl- 
edge of things can be had in a short enough tim.e, 
but their spirit can only be acquired by centuries 
of training and self-control. Dominating nature 
from outside is a much simpler thing than making 
her your own in love's delight, which is a work of 
true genius. Your race has shown that genius, not 
by requirements, but by creations, not by display 
of things, but by manifestation of its own inner 
being. This creative power there is in all nations, 
and it is ever active in getting hold of men's natures 
and giving them a form according to its ideals. But 
here, in Japan, it seems to have achieved its success, 
and have deeply sunk into the minds of all men, and 
permeated their muscles and nerves. Your instincts 
have become true, your senses keen, and your hands 
have acquired natural skill. The genius of Europe 
has given her people the power of organisation, 
which has specially made itself manifest in politics 
and commerce and in coordinating scientific knowl- 
edge. The genius of Japan has given you the vision 
of beauty in nature and the power of realising it 
in your life. And, because of this fact, the power 
of organisation has come so easily to your help when 
you needed it. For the rhythm of beauty is the 
inner spirit of the world, whose outer body is organi- 
sation. 

All particular civilisation is the interpretation of 
particular human experience. Europe seems to 



JAPAN 13 

have felt emphatically the conflict of things in the 
universe, which can only be brought under control 
by conquest. Therefore she is ever ready for fight, 
and the best portion of her attention is occupied in 
organising forces. But Japan has felt, in her world, 
the touch of some presence, which has evoked in 
her soul a feeling of reverent adoration. She does 
not boast of her mastery of nature, but to her she 
brings, with infinite care and joy, her offerings of 
love. Her relationship with the world is the deeper 
relationship of heart. This spiritual bond of love 
she has established with the hills of her country, 
with the sea and the streams, with the forests in all 
their flowery moods and varied physiognomy of 
branches; she has taken into her heart all the rustling 
whispers and sighing of the woodlands and sobbing 
of the waves; the sun and the moon she has studied in 
all the modulations of their lights and shades, and 
she is glad to close her shops to greet the seasons in 
her orchards and gardens and corn-fields. This 
opening of the heart to the soul of the world is not 
confined to a section of your privileged classes, it 
is not the forced product of exotic culture, but it 
belongs to all your men and women of all conditions. 
This experience of your soul, in meeting a personal- 
ity in the heart of the world, has been embodied in 
your civilisation. It is a civilisation of human re- 
lationship. Your duty towards your state has 
naturally assumed the character of filial duty, your 



14 JAPAN 

nation becoming one family with your Emperor as 
its head. Your national unity has not been evolved 
from the comradeship of arms for defensive and 
offensive purposes, or from the partnership in raid- 
ing adventures, dividing among each member the 
danger and spoils of robbery. It is not an outcome 
of the necessity of organisation for some ulterior 
purposes, but it is an extension of the family and 
the obligations of the heart. The ideal of "Maitri" 
is at the bottom of your culture, — "maitri" with 
men and "maitri" with nature. And the true ex- 
pression of this love is in the language of beauty, 
which is so abundantly universal in this land. This 
is the reason why a stranger, like myself, instead 
of feeling envy, or humiliation, before these mani- 
festations of beauty, these creations of love, feels 
his readiness to participate in the joy and glory of 
such revealment of the human heart. 

And this has made me all the more apprehensive 
of the change which threatens Japanese civilisation 
as something like a menace to one's own person. 
For the huge heterogeneity of the modern age, whose 
only common bond is usefulness, is nowhere so 
pitifully exposed against the dignity and the hidden 
power of reticent beauty as in Japan. 

But the danger is that this organised ugliness 
storms the mind and carries the day by its mass, by 
its aggressive persistence, by its power of mockery 
directed against the deeper sentiments of heart. 



JAPAN 15 

Its harsh obtrusiveness makes it forcibly visible 
to us, overcoming our senses, — and we bring to its 
altar sacrifices, as does a savage to his fetish, which 
appears powerful because of its hideousness. There- 
fore its rivalry to things that are modest and pro- 
found and have the subtle delicacy of life is to be 
dreaded. 

I am quite sure that there are men in your nation, 
who are not in sympathy with your national ideals; 
whose object is to gain, and not to grow. They are 
loud in their boast that they have modernised Japan. 
While I agree with them so far as to say that the 
spirit of the race should harmonise with the spirit 
of the time, I must warn them that modernising 
is a mere affectation of modernism, just as affecta- 
tion of poesy is poetising. It is nothing but mimicry. 
Only affectation is louder than the original, and it 
is too literal. One must bear in mind, that those 
who have the true modern spirit need not modernise, 
just as those who are truly brave are not braggarts. 
Modernism is not in the dress of the Europeans; 
or in the hideous structures, where their children 
are interned, when they take their lessons; or in the 
square houses with flat straight wall-surfaces, pierced 
with parallel lines of windows, where these people are 
caged in their life-time; certainly modernism is not 
in their ladies' bonnets, carrying on them loads of 
incongruities. These are not modern, but merely 
European. True modernism is freedom of mind. 



I 6 JAPAN 

not slavery of taste. It is independence of thought 
and action, not tutelage to European schoolmasters. 
It is science, but not its wrong application in life, — a 
mere imitation of our science teachers who reduce 
it into a superstition absurdly invoking its aid for 
all impossible purposes. 

Science, when it oversteps its limits and occupies 
the whole region of life, has its fascination. It looks 
so powerful because of its superficiality — does as a 
hippopotamus who is very little else but physical. 
Science speaks of the struggle for existence, but 
forgets that man's existence is not merely of the 
surface. Man truly exists in the ideal of perfection, 
whose depth and height are not yet measured. Life 
based upon science is attractive to some men, because 
it has all the characteristics of sport; it feigns serious- 
ness, but is not profound. When you go a-hunting, 
the less pity you have the better; for your one object 
is to chase the game and kill it, to feel that you are 
the greater animal, that your method of destruction 
is thorough and scientific. Because a sportsman 
is only a superficial man — his fulness of humanity 
not being there to hamper him — he is successful 
in kilHng innocent life and is happy. And the life of 
science is that superficial life. It pursues success 
with skill and thoroughness, and takes no account 
of the higher nature of man. But even science can- 
not tow humanity against truth and be successful; 
and those whose minds are crude enough to plan 



JAPAN 17 

their lives upon the supposition that man is merely 
a hunter and his paradise the paradise of sportsmen, 
will be rudely awakened in the midst of their trophies 
of skeletons and skulls. For man's struggle for 
existence is to exist in the fulness of his nature — 
not by curtailing all that is best in him and dwarfing 
his existence itself, but by accepting all the responsi- 
bilities of his spiritual life, even through death and 
defeat. 

I do not for a moment suggest that Japan should 
be unmindful of acquiring modern weapons of self- 
protection. But this should never be allowed to go 
beyond her instinct of self-preservation. She must 
know that the real power is not in the weapons 
themselves, but in the man who wields those weap- 
ons; and when he, in his eagerness for power, multi- 
plies his weapons at the cost of his own soul, then 
it is he who is in even greater danger than his enemies. 

Things that are living are so easily hurt; therefore 
they require protection. In nature, life protects 
itself in coverings which are built with life's own 
material. Therefore they are in harmony with life's 
growth, or else when the time comes they easily 
give way and are forgotten. The living man has 
his true protection in his spiritual ideals, which 
have their vital connection with his life and grow 
with his growth. But, unfortunately, all his armour 
is not living, — some of it is made of steel, inert and 
mechanical. Therefore, while making use of it, man 



18 JAPAN 

has to be careful to protect himself from its tyranny. 
If he is weak enough to grow smaller to fit himself 
to his covering, then it becomes a process of gradual 
suicide by shrinkage of the soul. And Japan must 
have a firm faith in the moral law of existence to be 
able to assert to herself that the Western nations are 
following that path of suicide where they are smother- 
ing their humanity under the immense weight of 
organisations in order to keep themselves in power 
and hold others in subjection. 

Therefore I cannot think that the imitation of the 
outward aspects of the West, which ife becoming 
more and more evident in modern Japan, is essential 
to her strength or stability. It is burdening her 
true nature and causing weakness, which will be 
more and more felt as time goes on. The habits 
which are being formed by the modern Japanese 
from their boyhood — the habits of the Western life, 
the habits of the alien culture — will prove, one day, 
a very great obstacle to the understanding of their 
own true nature. And then, if the children of Japan 
forget their past, if they stand as barriers, choking 
the stream that flows from the mountain peak of 
their ancient history, their future will be deprived 
of the water of life that has made her culture so 
fertile with richness of beauty and strength. 

What is still more dangerous for Japan is, not 
this imitation of the outer features of the West, but 
the acceptance of the motive force of the Western 



JAPAN 19 

civilisation as her own. Her social ideals are al- 
ready showing signs of defeat at the hands of poli- 
tics, and her modern tendency seems to incline 
towards political gambling — in which the players 
stake their souls to win their game. I can see her 
motto, borrowed from science, "Survival of the 
Fittest," writ large at the entrance of her present- 
day history, — the motto whose meaning is, "Help 
yourself, and never heed what it costs to others;" 
the motto of the blind man, who only believes in 
what he can touch, because he cannot see. But 
those who can see, know that men are so closely 
knit, that when you strike others the blow comes 
back to yourself. The m.oral law, which is the 
greatest discovery of man, is the discovery of this 
wonderful truth, that man becomes all the truer, 
the more he realises himself in others. This truth 
has not only a subjective value, but is manifested 
in every department of our life. And nations, who 
sedulously cultivate moral blindness as the cult of 
patriotism, will end their existence in a sudden and 
violent death. In past ages we had foreign invasions, 
but they never touched the souls of the people deeply; 
for the people, as a body, never participated in these 
games. They were merely the outcome of individual 
ambitions. Theiefore the ideals, whose seats were 
in the hearts of the people, would not undergo any 
serious change owing to the policies adopted by the 
kings or generals. But now, where the spirit of the 



20 JAPAN 

Western civilisation prevails, the whole people are 
being taught from their boyhood, by all kinds of 
means, to foster ambitions in their minds, which 
are the greatest menace to their neighbours and to 
nations other than their own. This is poisoning the 
very fountainhead of humanity. It is discrediting 
the ideals, which were born of the lives of men, who 
were our greatest and best. It is holding up selfish- 
ness as the one universal religion for all nations of 
the world. We can take anything else from the 
hands of science but not this elixir of moral death. 
Never think for a moment that the hurts you in- 
flict upon other races will not infect you, and the 
enmities you sow around your homes will be a wall 
of protection for you for all time to come. To imbue 
the minds of a whole people with an abnormal vanity 
of its own superiority, to teach it to take pride in its 
moral callousness and ill-begotten wealth, to perpe- 
trate the humiliation of defeated nations by exhibit- 
ing trophies won from war and using these in schools 
in order to breed in children's minds contempt for 
others is imitating the West where she has a festering 
sore, whose swelling is a swelling of disease eating 
into its vitality. 

Our food crops, which are necessary for our sus- 
tenance, are products of centuries of selection and 
care. But the vegetation, which we have not to 
transform into our lives, does not require the patient 
thoughts of generations. It is not easy to get rid 



JAPAN 21 

of weeds; but it Is easy, by process of neglect, to 
ruin your food crops and let them revert to their 
primitive state of wildness. Likewise the culture, 
which has so kindly adapted itself to your soil — so 
intimate with life, so human, — not only needed 
tilling and weeding in past ages, but still needs 
anxious work and watching. What is merely mod- 
ern, — as science and methods of organisation, — can 
be transplanted; but what is vitally human has 
fibres so delicate, and roots so numerous and far 
reaching, that it dies when moved from its soil. 
Therefore I am afraid of the rude pressure of the 
political ideals of the West upon your own. In 
political civilisation, the state is an abstraction and 
relationship of men utilitarian. Because it has no 
roots in sentiments, it is so dangerously easy to 
handle. Half a century has been enough for you 
to master this machine; and there are men among 
you, whose fondness for it exceeds their love for the 
living ideals, which were born with the birth of your 
nation and nursed in your centuries. It is like a 
child, who, in the excitement of his play, imagines 
he likes his playthings better than his mother. 

Where man is at his greatest, he is unconscious. 
Your civilisation, whose mainspring is the bond of 
human relationship, has been nourished In the depth 
of a healthy life beyond reach of prying self-analysis. 
But a mere political relationship is all conscious; 
it is an eruptive inflammation of aggressiveness. 



%2 JAPAN 

It has forcibly burst upon your notice. And the 
time has come, when you have to be roused into full 
consciousness of the truth by which you live, so 
that you may not be taken unawares. The past has 
been God's gift to you; about the present, you must 
make your own choice. 

So the questions you have to put to yourself are 
these, — "Have we read the world wrong, and based 
our relation to it upon an ignorance of human nature.^ 
Is the instinct of the West right, where she builds 
her national welfare behind the barricade of a uni- 
versal distrust of humanity.?" 

You must have detected a strong accent of fear 
whenever the West has discussed the possibility 
of the rise of an Eastern race. The reason of it is 
this, that the power by whose help she thrives, is an 
evil power; so long as it is held on her own side she 
can be safe, while the rest of the world trembles. 
The vital ambition of the present civilisation of 
Europe is to have the exclusive possession of the 
devil. All her armaments and diplomacy are di- 
rected upon this one object. But these costly rituals 
for invocation of the evil spirit lead through a path 
of prosperity to the brink of cataclysm. The furies 
of terror, that the West has let loose upon God's 
world, come back to threaten herself and goad her 
into preparations of more and more f rightfulness; 
this gives her no rest and makes her forget all else 
but the perils that she causes to others and incurs 



JAPAN 23 

herself. To the worship of this devil of politics she 
sacrifices other countries as victims. She feeds upon 
their dead flesh and grows fat upon it, so long as 
the carcases remain fresh, — but they are sure to 
rot at last, and the dead will take their vengeance, 
by spreading pollution far and wide and poisoning 
the vitality of the feeder. Japan had all her wealth 
of humanity, her harmony of heroism and beauty, 
her depth of self-control and richness of self-expres- 
sion; yet the Western nations felt no respect 
for her, till she proved that the blood-hounds of 
Satan are not only bred in the kennels of Europe, 
but can also be domesticated in Japan and fed with 
man's miseries. They admit Japan's equality with 
themselves, only when they know that Japan has 
also possessed the key to open the floodgate of hell- 
fire upon the fair earth, whenever she chooses, and 
can dance, in their own measure, the devil dance 
of pillage, murder, and ravishment of innocent 
women, while the world goes to ruin. We know that, 
in the early stage of man's moral immaturity, he 
only feels reverence for his god whose malevolence 
he dreads. But is this the ideal of man, which we 
can look up to with pride .f* After centuries of civilisa- 
tion nations fearing each other like the prowling 
wild beasts of the night time; shutting their doors 
of hospitality; combining only for purpose of ag- 
gression or defence; hiding in their holes their trade 
secrets, state secrets, secrets of their armaments; 



24 JAPAN 

making peace offerings to the barking dogs of each 
other with the meat which does not belong to them; 
holding down the fallen races struggling to stand 
upon their legs; counting their safety only upon the 
feebleness of the rest of humanity; with their right 
hands dispensing religion to weaker peoples, while 
robbing them with their left, — is there anything in 
this to make us envious? Are we to bend our knees 
to the spirit of this civilisation, which is sowing 
broadcast over all the world seeds of fear, greed, 
suspicion, unashamed lies of their diplomacy, and 
unctuous lies of their profession of peace and good- 
will and universal brotherhood of Man? Can we 
have no doubt in our minds, when we rush to the 
Western market to buy this civilisation in exchange 
for our own inheritance? I know how difficult it is 
to know one's self; and the man, who is intoxicated, 
furiously denies his drunkenness; yet the West her- 
self is anxiously thinking of her problems and trying 
experiments. But she is like a glutton, who has not 
the heart to give up his intemperance in eating, and 
fondly clings to the hope that he can cure his night- 
mares of indigestion by medicine. Europe is not 
ready to give up her political inhumanity, with all 
the baser passions of man attendant upon it; she 
believes only in modification of systems, and not 
in change of heart. 

We are willing to buy their machine-made sys- 
tems, not with our hearts, but with our brains. We 



JAPAN 2S 

shall try them and build sheds for them, but not 
enshrine them in our homes, or temples. There are 
races, who worship the animals they kill; we can buy 
meat from them, when we are hungry, but not the 
worship which goes with that killing. We must 
not vitiate our children's minds with the supersti- 
tion, that business is business, war is war, politics 
is politics. We must know that man's business has 
to be more than mere business, and so have to be 
his war and politics. You had your own industry 
in Japan; how scrupulously honest and true it was, 
you can see by its products, — by their grace and 
strength, their conscientiousness in details, where 
they can hardly be observed. But the tidal wave 
of lies has swept over your land from the West, where 
business is business, and honesty is followed in it 
where it is the best policy. Have you never felt 
shame, when you see the trade advertisements, not 
only plastering the whole town with lies and ex- 
aggerations, but invading the green fields, where the 
peasants do their honest labour, and the hill-tops 
which greet the first pure light of the morning? It 
is so easy to dull our sense of honour and delicacy 
of mind with constant abrasion, while falsehood 
stalks abroad, with proud steps, in the name of trade, 
politics and patriotism, and any protest against 
their perpetual intrusions into our lives is considered 
to be sentimentalism unworthy of true manliness. 
And it has come to pass, that the children of those 



26 JAPAN 

heroes, who would keep their word at the point of 
death, who would disdain to cheat men for vulgar 
profit, who even in their fight would much rather 
court defeat than be dishonourable, have become 
energetic in dealing with falsehoods and do not feel 
humiliated by gaining advantage from them. And 
this has been effected by the charm of the word 
"modern." But if undiluted utility be modern, 
beauty is of all ages; if mean selfishness be modern, 
the human ideals are no new inventions. And we 
must know for certain, that however modern may 
be the proficiency which clips and cripples man 
for the sake of methods and machines, it will never 
live to be old. 

When Japan is in imminent peril of neglecting to 
realise where she is great, it is the duty of a foreigner 
like myself to remind her, that she has given rise 
to a civilisation which is perfect in its form, and has 
evolved a sense of sight which clearly sees truth in 
beauty and beauty in truth. She has achieved 
something which is positive and complete. It is 
easier for a stranger to know what it is in her, which 
is truly valuable for all mankind, — what is there, 
which only she, of all other races, has produced from 
her inner life and not from her mere power of adapta- 
bility. Japan must be reminded, that it is her sense 
of the rhythm of life and of all things, her genius 
for simplicity, her love for cleanliness, her definite- 
ness of thought arid action, her cheerful fortitude. 



JAPAN 27 

her immense reserve of force in self-control, her 
sensitiveness to her code of honour and defiance of 
death, which have given her the power to resist the 
cyclonic storm of exploitation that has sprung from 
the shores of Europe circling round and round the 
world. All these qualities are the outcome of a 
civilisation, whose foundation is in the spiritual 
ideals of life. Such a civilisation has the gift of im- 
mortality; for it does not offend against the laws of 
creation and is not assailed by all the forces of nature. 
I feel it is a sacrilege not to be careful to try to pro- 
tect it from the incursion of vulgarity of power. 

But while trying to free our minds from the arro- 
gant claims of Europe and to help ourselves out of 
the quicksands of our infatuation, we may go to the 
other extreme and blind ourselves into a wholesale 
suspicion of the West. The reaction of disillusion- 
ment is just as unreal as the first shock of illusion. 
We must try to come to that normal state of mind, 
by which we can clearly discern our own danger 
and avoid it, without being unjust towards the source 
of that danger. There is always the natural tempta- 
tion in us of wishing to pay back Europe in her own 
coin, and return contempt for contempt and evil 
for evil. But that again would be to imitate Europe 
in one of her worst features which comes out in her 
behaviour to people whom she describes as yellow 
or red, brown or black. And this is a point on which 
we in the East have to acknowledge our guilt and 



28 JAPAN 

own that our sin has been as great, If not greater, 
when we insulted humanity by treating with utter 
disdain and cruelty men who belonged to a particu- 
lar creed, colour or caste, It is really because we are 
afraid of our own weakness, which allows itself to 
be overcome by the sight of power, that we try to 
substitute for it another weakness which makes itself 
blind to the glories of the West. When we truly 
know the Europe which is great and good, we can 
effectively save ourselves from the Europe which 
is mean and grasping. It is easy to be unfair in 
one's judgment when one is faced with human 
miseries, — and p'essimism is the result of building 
theories while the mind is suffering. To despair for 
humanity is only possible, if we lose faith in the 
power which brings to it strength, when its defeat 
is greatest, and calls out new life from the depth of 
its destruction. We must admit that there is a 
living soul in the West which is struggling unob- 
served against the hugeness of the organisations 
under which men, women and children are being 
crushed, and whose mechanical necessities are ignor- 
ing laws that are spiritual and human, — the soul 
whose sensibilities refuse to be dulled completely 
by the dangerous habits of heedlessness in deaHngs 
with races for whom it lacks natural sympathy. 
The West could never have risen to the eminence 
she has reached, if her strength were merely the 
strength of the brute, or of the machine. The divine 



JAPAN 29 

in her heart is suffering from the injuries inflicted 
by her hands upon the world, — and from this pain 
of her higher nature flows the secret balm which will 
bring healing to the wounds. Time after time she 
has fought against herself and has undone the chains 
which, with her own hands, she had fastened round 
helpless limbs; and though she forced poison down 
the throats of a great nation at the point of sword 
for gain of money, she herself woke up to withdraw 
from it, to wash her hands clean again. This shows 
hidden springs of humanity in spots which look dead 
and barren. It proves that the deeper truth in her 
nature, which can survive such career of cruel 
cowardliness, is not greed, but reverence for un- 
selfish ideals. It would be altogether unjust, both 
to us and to Europe, to say that she has fascinated 
the modern Eastern mind by the mere exhibition 
of her power. Through the smoke of cannons and 
dust of markets the light of her moral nature has 
shone bright, and she has brought to us the ideal of 
ethical freedom, whose foundation lies deeper than 
social conventions and whose province of activity 
is world-wide. 

The East has instinctively felt, even through her 
aversion, that she has a great deal to learn from 
Europe, not merely about the materials of power, 
but about its inner source, which is of mind and of 
the moral nature of man. And because Europe has 
won our deep respect, she has become so dangerous 



30 JAPAN 

for us where she is turbulently weak and false, dan- 
gerous like poison when it is served along with our 
food. There is one safety for us upon which we 
hope we may count, and that is, that we can claim 
Europe herself as our best ally in our resistance to 
her temptations and to her violent encroachments; 
for she has ever carried her own standard of per- 
fection, by which we can measure her falls and 
gauge her degrees of failures, by which we can call 
her before her own tribunal and put her to shame, — 
the shame which is the sign of the true pride of 
nobleness. 

But our fear is, that the poison may be more 
powerful than the food, and what is strength may 
not be the sign of health, but the contrary; for it 
may be temporarily caused by the upsetting of the 
balance of life. Our fear is that evil has a fateful 
fascination, when it assumes dimensions which are 
colossal, — and though, at last, it is sure to lose its 
centre of gravity, by its abnormal disproportion, 
the mischief which it creates before its fall may be 
beyond reparation. 

Therefore I ask you to have the strength of faith 
and clarity of mind to know for certain, that the 
lumbering structure of modern progress, riveted by 
the iron screws of efficiency, which runs upon the 
wheels of ambition, cannot hold together for long. 
Collisions are certain to occur; for it has to travel 
upon organised lines, it is too heavy to choose its 



JAPAN 31 

own course freely; and once it is off the rail, its 
endless train of vehicles is dislocated. A day will 
come, when it will fall in a heap of ruin and cause 
serious obstruction to the traffic of the world. Do we 
not see signs of this even now.? Does not the voice 
come to us, through the din of war, the shrieks of 
hatred, the wailings of despair, through the churning 
up of the unspeakable filth which has been accumu- 
lating for ages in the bottom of this civilisation, — 
the voice which cries to our soul, that the tower of 
national selfishness, which goes by the name ot 
patriotism, which has raised its banner of treason 
against heaven, must totter and fall with a crash, 
weighed down by its own bulk, its flag kissing the 
dust, its light extinguished? My brothers, when the 
red light of conflagration sends up its crackle of 
laughter to the stars, keep your faith upon those 
stars and not upon the fire of destruction. For when 
this conflagration consumes itself and dies down, 
leaving its memorial in ashes, the eternal light will 
again shine in the East, — the East which has been 
the birthplace of the morning sun of man's history. 
And who knows if that day has not already dawned, 
and the sun not risen, in the Easternmost horizon 
of Asia.? And I offer, as did my ancestor rishis, 
my salutation to that sunrise of the East, which is 
destined once again to illumine the whole world. 

I know my voice is too feeble to raise itself above 
the uproar of this bustling time, and it is easy for 



3.2 JAPAN 

any street urchin to fling against me the epithet of 
"unpractical." It will stick to my coat-tail, never 
to be washed away, efl"ectively excluding me from 
the consideration of all respectable persons. I know 
what a risk one runs, from the vigorously athletic 
crowds, to be styled an idealist in these days, when 
thrones have lost their dignity and prophets have 
become an anachronism, when the sound that drowns 
all voices is the noise of the market-place. Yet when, 
one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama 
town, bristling with its display of modern miscel- 
lanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, 
and saw its peace and majesty among your pine- 
clad hills, — with the great Fujiama growing faint 
against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with 
his own radiance, — the music of eternity welled up 
through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky 
and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the 
dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with 
the marketsmen robustly contemptuous of all senti- 
ments, — that, after the forgetfulness of his own 
divinity, man will remember again that heaven is 
always in touch with his world, which can never be 
abandoned for good to the hounding wolves of the 
modern era, scenting human blood and howling to 
the skies. 



